Monthly Archives: October 2010

Every year the cold weather catches me by surprise and it really shouldn’t because it sticks around for six months out of the year. After I get over the initial shock, however, I gleefully start pulling out the ridiculous amounts of scarves and mittens I own (no hats for this head unless it’s really cold).

I don’t believe there is anything more rewarding than knitting a scarf. They are the first project many knitters tackle and yet they never seems to lose their appeal. I’ve been knitting for about five years and I still love knitting scarves, in fact, I’m working on one right now. But of course scarves are only part of the winter accessory equation. Hats are usually the next thing a knitter learns how to make and if you dare to be a little adventurous mittens follow. Here are my favorite mittens, scarf and hat that I’ve made.

My mom made the mittens and I embellished them with some needle felting. I love them!

This is the very first thing I ever knit. It’s nothing special but I’m rather attached to it and out of all the scarves I have my favorite.

My first attempt at fair isle knitting was this hat for Dieter. I think it’s awesome even if it’s not perfect.

I love desserts. Let me rephrase that I indulge in, salivate over, and dream about desserts. So when I find a tasty dessert recipe I have to share. Chocolate chip cookies are a staple in most kitchens and whether you’ve used refrigerated dough or made them from scratch I’m sure most of you have baked up a batch. This recipe makes the best chocolate chip cookies I have ever had. No kidding. And this is coming from a dessert/sweets aficionado.

1 cup chopped walnuts and/or raisins (optional, I never add these…it messes with the integrity of the chocolate chips)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Lightly butter a baking sheet.

In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar together until smooth. Beat in the eggs until well blended. In a separate bowl, sift together the white flour, whole wheat flour, baking soda, and salt. Stir the dry ingredients into the butter mixture, mixing well. Add the vanilla and water. Stir in the chocolate chips and, if you wish, the nuts and/or raisins.

For 3-inch cookies, drop the batter by scant 1/4 cups onto the baking sheet, leaving 2 inches of space between the cookies. Bake for about 10 minutes, or until the edges and bottoms are light brown and the tops golden. Check after 8 minutes to avoid overbaking. Note: I don’t know if my scant 1/4 cups are bigger but I bake my cookies for about 12 minutes allowing for the perfect amount of chewiness in the center of each cookie. If I bake them any shorter they end up being too doughy.

I wanted to take a picture of the full batch of cookies but this was the only one remaining.

As soon as I found out we were having a boy I started thinking about what I wanted the nursery to look like. At that time the nursery was in St. Louis, now it’s in Minnesota. Because we were living in an apartment at the time I didn’t want to go overboard with decorations and paint so I started with something small. Working at Joann Fabrics at the time gave me access to infinite amounts of inspiration and materials so here is what I came up with.

How I did it:

-1 package of scrapbooking paper with some awesome prints

-3D foam squares

-Picture frames of various sizes, glass removed (I used 5×7 and 4×6 sizes)

-Name using favorite font, enlarged to desired size, printed and cut out (I found mine in Microsoft Word)

First I took the time to match up the page designs that looked good together to place in each frame. Then I took the font stencils and traced them onto the scrapbooking paper. Once they were cut out I simply put a few 3D foam squares on the back of each and placed them on the background paper. Pop them into the frame and voila! It was so easy to do and added a cute, personlized look to Dieter’s room.

I’m doing it. Finally. For about a year I’ve been thinking about blogs. What makes a good blog? Why do people follow blogs? And what would I blog about? My life certainly isn’t interesting enough to tell you what I had for breakfast or how I spent my afternoon. What I do want to share are the ideas I get from everyday life. I want this to be a place where I can organize my creativity because it’s a mess in my head. So let’s begin and I’ll show you what inspires my life.